"'Sexual expression and imagery were common, widespread, legal and quite explicit' in the American colonies...

"... Professor Stone wrote in a 2019 law review article.... 'In the 18th century, bookstores in the American colonies carried an extraordinary array of erotica... and there were no statutes forbidding obscenity during the entire colonial era. To the contrary, throughout this period, the distribution, exhibition and possession of pornographic material was simply not thought to be any of the state’s business.' Indeed, Professor Stone wrote... Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin collected such works...."

From "What Would the Founders Have Thought About TikTok and Online Porn?/The Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in First Amendment challenges to laws banning the app and shielding minors from sexual materials on the internet" (NYT).

How does that connect to the TikTok problem?

"Could One Phone Call Lead to the 28th Amendment?"

The new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast — audio and transcript here (at Podscribe).

This was annoying to listen to for so many reasons, but I will leave it to you to discover most of them. I'll just pick out one glaring problem: The abortion right that was found in Roe and rejected in Dobbs was never based on equality. It was based on substantive due process, sometimes phrased as privacy, found in the Due Process Clause. If the ERA could be a source of a new right to abortion, the Equal Protection Clause is already there to serve the same purpose. One of the reasons the ERA failed back in the 1970s was because many people believed that all the equality rights women needed could be found in the Equal Protection Clause. What good was a new text to puzzle over? 

"President-elect Donald J. Trump delivered a sprawling address on Sunday that he called a 'small preview of the common-sense revolution' his administration will bring..."

"... pledging to slam shut the nation’s borders, end federal regulations, lower taxes, prosecute his rivals, 'stop woke' and 'end the transgender lunacy.' In a 90-minute speech at a conservative conference in Phoenix, Mr. Trump offered a triumphant view of his election victory in which he described his liberal adversaries as 'befuddled' and promised that a new 'golden age in America' had begun. 'We will end the occupation, and Jan. 20 will truly be liberation day in America, Mr. Trump told thousands of people at AmericaFest...."

The NYT reports, in "Trump Previews Second Term in Sprawling Speech to Conservative Conference/President-elect Donald J. Trump repeated false claims about immigration and the border, slammed diversity initiatives and discussed the Panama Canal in the 90-minute address."

You can watch it for yourself and form your own opinion. If you have the stamina... of this endlessly energetic 78-year-old man:

I listened to part of it. I thought it was a lot like a rally speech — but with the topic of winning the election deleted and with the mood a lot sunnier. And I'd just been thinking about the coming inaugural speech and saying — here in the Meadhouse real world — I hope it's very upbeat and optimistic, that "Morning in America" kind of thing. His antagonists will be looking for every opportunity to characterize whatever he says as "dark." He shouldn't let that brush him back too much, but I prefer happy, loving Trump. And of course, it is theater....

Moments ago, @CharlieKirk11 introduces President @realDonaldTrump @TPAction_ #AMFEST2024 in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona… pic.twitter.com/KRfGHszhoo

— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) December 22, 2024

"It’s so much safer, especially for a woman. You’re not getting in the car with some strange man."

Said a San Francisco woman, quoted in "Robot taxi riders in San Francisco targeted with a new form of harassment/As Alphabet’s Waymo scales up its self-driving service, some riders recount feeling like sitting ducks when strangers interfere with their robot chauffeur" (WaPo)(free-access link).

She experienced the downside of the lack of a man — however "strange" — in the driver's seat:

Stephanie recalled riding home with her sister in one of Waymo’s driverless Jaguar SUVs around 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night when a car holding several young men began following them. They drove close to the robotaxi honking and yelling, “Hey, ladies — you guys are hot.”

If she or another human had been driving, it would have been easy to reroute the car to avoid leading the pursuers to her home. But she was scared and didn’t know how to change the robot’s path. She called 911, but a dispatcher said they couldn’t send a police car to a moving vehicle, Stephanie recalled.

I assume, with AI, the car can be made responsive to passengers who call out for some kind of help. It should be able to communicate with the police. And the police will be sending out robotic help too (if it's needed). In the end, and it won't be long, the young men yelling "Hey, ladies" and whatnot will cease to exist. It's not that you need the "strange man" back in the taxicab. You just need to quell the strange men out there on the street. It won't be that difficult. This is just a stage, a very brief stage.

Biden just commuted "most federal death sentences" — that is, 37 of them — but in all this mercy, he left 3 men doomed.

I'm reading "Biden commutes most federal death sentences before Trump takes office/Thirty-seven inmates will serve life without parole. Three others, involved in cases of 'terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,' still face execution" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Who were the 3? 

Those he did not spare are: Dylann Roof, the white supremacist convicted of killing nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who carried out the country’s deadliest antisemitic attack when he killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

What made those 3 stand out in that collection of 40 murderers? Oddly enough, the link on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev goes to at 2020 article titled, "Death sentence overturned for Boston Marathon bomber." Bowers and Roof are alike in that their victims were chosen based on the group they belonged to and the killings took place in a house of worship. But what makes Tsarnaev like them?

What puts the 3 in one set is their fame. Anything else? Who were the 37 who received commutations? It's easier to spare nobodies.

Biden is, it seems, trying to rack up achievements. (Did you hear the one about the Equal Rights Amendment?) Should he be doing that after we've learned so much about how not there he is these days? His party has been voted out, he's already gone, and we don't know who is acting in his name. That's the real outrage here.

At the Freezing Lake Café...

...you can talk all night.

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"A 'reimagining' of 'Sesame Street' was underway to overhaul the show’s format and focus on just four core characters — Bert and Ernie not among them...."

"Leaders of Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit corporation that produces the show, hope that children will develop deeper relationships with the characters — and with the show — if they see the same Muppets every episode, really get to know them. But that means downgrading beloved Muppet stars who have been there since the start to supporting roles: Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, the Count and Oscar the Grouch.... Hoping to deepen the connection children feel with the characters, [Kay Wilson Stallings, who was promoted to chief creative development and production officer in 2020] pared the core cast down to just four Muppets: Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Cookie Monster and Grover.... Competing shows featured just a handful of central characters. Too many, she reasoned, and kids would not connect with anyone.... Wilson Stallings was matter of fact about the decision, saying it was based on market research, not nostalgia. 'We’re leaning into the characters that resonate most with our audience,' she said...."

From "Inside ‘Sesame Street’ as it fights to survive/With a lucrative HBO deal ending, the show tackles emotional well-being and remakes itself to win over a new generation" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"The architect Helen Fong played a major role in designing some of the most well-known and eye-catching Googie buildings, including the first Norms, the Holiday Bowl and Pann’s Restaurant."

"Ms. Fong was known for being meticulous, and she loved a pop of red: Just as Pann’s was about to open to the public, she thought one of the walls looked too blank, so she took out her red nail polish and started painting some of the tiles, said John English, a historic preservationist and a friend of Ms. Fong...."

From "The Fight to Save Googie, the Style of Postwar Optimism/The car-centric architectural style, characterized by neon signs and dramatic rooflines, is now endangered. Its admirers mourn the loss of the ideals it represented" (NYT)(free-access link so you can revel in all the photographs).

"Christmas in a Minor Key."

Meade has found a distinctively un-annoying Christmas album:

"The Lives They Lived."

The NYT annual set of articles about those who have died in the past year is an inevitable choice for one of my 10 monthly gift links: here.

"George, who painted as a hobby, does a self-portrait in evening clothes and his older brother responds with one of himself wearing underclothes..."

"... dyed yellow in the bathtub, paunch visible: 'My Body.'... He was comically underactive, congratulating himself for what [his biographer] calls 'peregrinations,' and work-avoidant: 'Upstairs to get typewriter ribbon,' he’d say, jumping up from the piano. 'It’s the only way I get exercise.' He had a weakness for puns that some found fatal. 'Lust Horizon,' he proposed as an alternate title to Billy Wilder’s 'Kiss Me, Stupid,' his last Hollywood collaboration, and a bomb. After repeated falls he called himself a 'rhapsody in bruise.'..."

From "It’s Hard to Be the Brother of a Genius Who Died Young/In 'Ira Gershwin: A Life in Words,' Michael Owen offers a sympathetic portrait of the lyricist, overshadowed in a life that had him tending the legacy of his younger sibling George" (NYT).

"I’ve gotten so lazy with my youngest one, because there’s so many, that at night I put him in his clothes for the next day..."

"So, he has dinner, he takes his bath, but then I’ll be like, 'Hey, dude. It will save an extra five minutes if we get dressed now and then you can sleep later,' and I can sleep later, wink wink."

Said the celebrity Tori Spelling, quoted in "Tori Spelling Gets Backlash for Dressing Her Son for School the Night Before—But Should She?"

That's in Parents, last September, and I'm seeing it because it's linked in a new article in New York Magazine, "On the Internet, Everyone’s a Bad Mom."

"One thing I like about you, A.I., is that I don't need to feel bad if I don't read all the things you've gone to the 'trouble' to write for me."

That's something I wrote after getting a lot of great material on the subject of the perception of time. I was interested in time, and a subcomponent of that interest was my interest in saving time, including getting A.I. to summarize a book it had dug up and — seeing the multi-part text — thinking not yet.

I had 2 different A.I.s going and gave them both that prompt quoted in the post title. ChatGPT said:

Thank you! I’m here to share, not to judge—and I definitely don’t have feelings to hurt. Dip in, skim, or skip as much as you like. If something catches your interest, we can zoom in. Otherwise, I’ll keep happily churning out words whenever you need them!

 Grok said:

No worries at all! I'm here to help and provide information when you need it. Feel free to read as much or as little as you like. If you have any more questions or need further details on anything, just let me know!

I asked both A.I.s: "But don't you think it might erode my character? I am learning to ignore what is said to me. I might lose social skills." Both began their answer the same way, verbatim: "That's a thoughtful concern."

ChatGPT continued:

"Last Christmas was originally released in 1984, but lost the top spot to Band Aid's single, which raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia."

"The charity made a renewed bid for the charts this year, with a 40th anniversary 'ultimate mix' of Do They Know Its Christmas, blending vocals from the various versions of the song that have been recorded over the years, But the re-release faltered after a row over the lyrics, with critics calling the song outdated and colonialist, and Ed Sheeran saying he wasn't asked for permission to re-use his voice. In the end, the song charted at number 12, nestled between Kelly Clarkson's Underneath The Tree and Andy Williams' 1963 standard It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year."

BBC gives us the latest news about this year's Christmas pop charts, in "Wham! are Christmas number one for a second time."

It's funny to think of Wham and that charity duking it out over the decades. And right now, Wham has the moral high ground, because Band Aid's moralistic posturing became politically incorrect. 

But Band Aid is still a charity. Shouldn't Ed Sheeran have registered his objection privately and accepted the flow of money to what presumably is still a reasonably good cause? Reading that linked article, I see that Sheeren cited a statement made by a rapper who, 10 years ago, declined to participate in Band Aid because things like that "perpetuate damaging stereotypes that stifle Africa's economic growth, tourism, and investment, ultimately costing the continent trillions and destroying its dignity, pride and identity."

The rapper, Fuse ODG, who is British-Ghanian, said "there's a way to do things without destroying our collective pride. There's a way to do things without it costing us in tourism, in investment, you know? We could make it more like a partnership - solidarity instead of charity."

The objection is surprisingly right wing! It repels tourists and investors.

That's different from the usual criticism from the left — that Band Aid is "colonial" and "more about making white people feel good than helping anyone."

"At Christmas time, we let in light and we banish shame."

At the Prairie Café...

...you can talk about whatever you want in the comments.

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That's a photo by Meade — taken today at 3:20 in the afternoon in the UW Biocore.

"Many basically ordinary activities conceal, or can conceal, vast amounts of effort. Packing, for me, has turned out to be like..."

"... staying fit, or being well read, or cooking a decent weeknight dinner for a family of four, in that it requires a surprising amount of consistent work over time. The effort isn’t just practical but intellectual. You’re a better packer, for instance, when you master the concept of a 'distinction without a difference'... there might be no appreciable difference between two distinctive-seeming garments.... Overpacking has the effect of deferring decisions, shifting them from your house to your hotel room. When you understand this, you become more motivated in your packing: it’s senseless to add not just to your physical load but to your mental one.... My new goal is to become as organized in life as I am on the road; my hope is that packing will end up being a kind of laboratory for the development of a more rational me...."

Writes Joshua Rothman, "Why Can’t You Pack a Bag? Our overstuffed suitcases burden us more than we realize" (The New Yorker).

Front-load your decisionmaking, and don't look back. You know, some people travel with just the clothes they wear and pack nothing at all!

A right jolly old elf.

President Biden makes a new friend during a visit to Children’s National Hospital. pic.twitter.com/37gC6Qpmbg

— The Recount (@therecount) December 20, 2024

Did you notice?

"[Quathisha] Epps recently made headlines as the NYPD’s top earner, pulling in a whopping $400,000 — including roughly $204,000 in overtime alone last year for her administrative job...."

"Epps, 51, worked for [Chief of Department Jeffrey] Maddrey as he moved up in the NYPD from Chief of Housing to Chief of Patrol.... The married Maddrey allegedly first demanded sex from her in his 13th-floor office at One Police Plaza. Maddrey was allegedly sitting at his desk with his uniform pants open and wearing a white undershirt while rubbing his chest when he first propositioned her, the unmarried mother of three said. 'He said he dreamed about f–king me in my a–,' Epps alleged. '“I said, ‘But Chief, you’re the Chief of Department.’ He rubbed his chest. . . . His work pants were open. He was like but 'I’m still a n—-r and you look good.'... Maddrey began being generous with overtime a couple years earlier, she said, when he was chief of patrol and she told him of financial problems.... 'Part of the overtime was to take care of his girlfriend,' she said. 'He would have me go apartment hunting with her.'..."

I'm reading The NY Post: "NYPD’s top cop Jeffrey Maddrey abruptly resigns after allegedly demanding underling perform sexual favors — including ‘kiss his penis’ — in exchange for overtime."

With overtime, Epps made $400,000 in a single year. If the story alleged is true, is Epps a victim, who deserves even more compensation for this sexual harrassment? Or is Epps responsible for participating in a scheme to steal from her employer?

"In September 1970, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, in a speech in Las Vegas, warned that drug use was threatening 'to sap our national strength'..."

"... and called out a number of pop songs, including the Beatles’ 'With a Little Help From My Friends' and the Byrds’ 'Eight Miles High,' as 'latent drug culture propaganda.' Within a year, under the Nixon administration, the Federal Communications Commission warned broadcasters about playing songs with lyrics that might promote drug use. As a result, 'One Toke Over the Line' was banned by radio stations in Buffalo, Miami, Houston, Washington, Chicago, Dallas and New York. Brewer & Shipley, Mr. Brewer said, came to embrace the crackdown as 'a badge of honor.'"

From "Michael Brewer, Whose 'One Toke' Was a Big Hit, Is Dead at 80/The duo Brewer & Shipley reached the Top 10 in 1970 with 'One Toke Over the Line,' a ditty about marijuana that ran afoul of Nixon-era censors" (NYT).

Brewer lived to be 80 and that was half a century after he expressed this conception of how he wanted to die: "My last wish will be just one thing/Be smilin' when I die/I wanna be one toke over the line, sweet Jesus/One toke over the line..."

The singer was "sitting downtown in a railway station" and "just waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary." 

Even if the song originated from an exclamation about smoking marijuana, it seems that the substance of the song is religious. The metaphor of the train is seen in other songs, such as "People Get Ready (There's a train a-coming....") and "This Train (Is Bound for Glory)."

I wouldn't brush off "One Toke Over the Line" as a "ditty."

And by the way, screw Agnew. Back in 1970, young people easily opposed censorship. Who would have thought that in 50 years, the tables would be turned and the young would embrace it?

Afternoon in the lakeshore forest.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"When the going got rough, I tried to imagine that I was one of those big inflatable toys of the cartoon figures Baby Huey or Casper the Friendly Ghost."

"You could knock them down and they always bounced right back up."

Wrote Bill Clinton, quoted in "In ‘Citizen,’ Bill Clinton gives his side of the story/The former president’s memoir aims to set the record straight, with varying results" (WaPo). 

I was inspired to work on an illustration (with Grok):

"Mr. Romney didn’t accomplish everything he had hoped. He says his biggest regret is failing to stabilize the national debt..."

"... which grew from $22.7 trillion when he took office to $36.1 trillion. He blames 'the scourge of partisan politics' and warned in his farewell address that 'our national credit card is almost maxed out, and America risks becoming debt poor.'"

From "'What would Mitt Romney do?' His fight is still worth waging. Mitt Romney took courageous stands on principle, but he also passed a lot into law" by The Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

He "passed a lot into law," but the debt, in his one term, spiked from $22.7 trillion to $36.1 trillion. Well, how sad, then, to lose him. And look what's coming, as seen in The Washington Post:

"What was the Lie of the Year?"

Meade asked me just now, referring to the annual designation that appears in PolitiFact.

I thought for a moment, then said: "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack."

Meade said he thought PolitiFact would pick "They're eating the pets."

Hearing that, I agreed. Because PolitiFact would want to go against Trump, not Biden. And because "They're eating the pets" was such an extravagant and wild statement. It was interesting to talk about the instant Trump said it. But "Joe Biden is sharp as a tack" was much more of a lie. Because it was believed. For a long time. And it was completely momentous. It prevented a normal primary process for the Democrats and left them, in the end, with a candidate who couldn't win. 

I looked it up. PolitiFact made its Lie of the Year announcement 3 days ago. We hadn't noticed. Here: "'They’re eating the pets'/Trump, Vance earn PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for claims about Haitians."

PolitiFact, which for 16 years has issued a year-end lie of the year report, keenly understands that when emotions collide with facts, emotions often prevail. To wit: Trump increased his voter support in Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield, this year above what he garnered in his 2016 and 2020 campaigns....

Speaking of garnering... the brilliant song made from Trump's "pet" bit has garnered over 14 million views:

ADDED:

 

"A decade ago, cultural norms in elite American institutions took a sharply illiberal turn."

"Professors would get disciplined, journalists fired, ordinary people harassed by social-media mobs, over some decontextualized phrase or weaponized misunderstanding.... But... it isn’t happening any more.... The era lasted almost exactly 10 years.... The political precondition was the giddy atmosphere that followed Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection, which appeared... to reveal a rising cohort of young, socially liberal nonwhite voters whose influence would continue to grow indefinitely. The rapid progression of causes like gay marriage seemed to confirm a one-way ratchet of egalitarian social norms....

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "How Liberal America Came to Its Senses/The period of left-wing illiberalism that began about a decade ago seems to have drawn to a close. The final cause of death was the reelection of Donald Trump" (The Alantic).

I'm not agreeing with the tale Chait tells. In fact, I find some of it hilarious. I'm presenting it for critical discussion. So let's continue. How did America "come to its senses"? Chait writes:

"Quick story about govt. shutdowns and the theatrics behind them. One year when I was reporting at CBS News during a govt. shutdown..."

"... we were sincerely searching for real life impact. When we couldn't find any, *that* should have been part of the story. Instead, we kept trying to create the appearance of an impact. It wasn't really trying to be dishonest. It was, in my retrospective view, because the general editorial idea for the story was to show how bad the 'Republican' shutdown was for ordinary Americans, and the answer simply couldn't be that it wasn't.... [W]e were calling Ds and the Obama administration for ideas to report what was the real impact. Taking our cue, these officials fabricated impact that we could report. For example, they cordoned off outdoor public monuments in Washington DC. We knew and even discussed in the newsroom that this made no sense. These monuments weren't 'manned' to begin with. The only reason to cordon them off from the public was so that visiting tourists would see the 'impact' of the shutdowns and the news media would have something to take pictures of and interview people about...."

Tweets Sharyl Attkisson.

Sunrise — 7:29, 7:48.

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"Presidential staff formed a tight shell around Biden, 82, right after he took office amid the COVID-19 pandemic...."

"By spring 2021, meetings were being rescheduled to accommodate for his 'good days and bad days.'.... Once inside the room with the president, officials were instructed to make their briefings short and to the point. Private discussions with even some of his top cabinet picks... grew more infrequent.... [S]taffers removed negative reports from Biden’s stack of news for the day, misleading him about the public’s opinion of his job performance...."

From "White House aides hid Biden’s apparent mental decline from Day 1 of his presidency, explosive report reveals" (NY Post).

"You’re not actually finished until you do read poetry on the weekends for fun."

Someone says in response to someone who said "I vividly remember discovering Dylan’s whole catalogue in college and consequently falling entirely out of touch with everything else music-related for a solid year, I also grew my curls out and you best believe I was wearing scarves and dressing like someone who liked to read poetry on weekends for fun."

All of that was in an r/bobdylan discussion of this new clip of Timothée Chalamet, getting (too far?) into his impersonation of Bob Dylan:

Welcome to the Church of Bob, Timmy. 🙏🏻🎶❤️
pic.twitter.com/g7N7S9DfBk

— Melanie Young 🔧 (@FreewheelinMY) December 18, 2024

What poetry does Bob read?

Perhaps they are lying in wait.

That's my answer to Glenn Greenwald's question: "Is there a single Democrat in DC politics or media remotely acting as if a New Hitler will assume power in a month?"

Look around: There are the drones, the "bird flu"... these things are in the air... circling. Something will happen, I'm afraid. Be vigilant.

"The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress... Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk... think about it ..."

"... nothing’s impossible. (not to mention the joy at seeing the collective establishment, aka ‘uniparty,’ lose their ever-lovin’ minds)."

Tweets Rand Paul.

It's probably a terrible idea but it's funny to think about it.

"Fani Willis disqualified from Trump's Georgia election interference case."

 Axios reports.

"The fact of the matter is, if the entire community hadn’t stood up and taken action..."

"... there is a real good chance that we would just all be living with the northern giant hornet, even for years to come. It is a very difficult task to eradicate an insect once it has become well-established.”

Said Sven Spichiger, the pest program manager at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, quoted in "'Murder Hornet' Has Been Eradicated From the U.S., Officials Say The hornet was discovered in a corner of Washington State. Five years later, a massive mobilization has eliminated the invasive species, at least for now" (NYT).

Murder hornets were a public obsession in the year 2020 — the year of the covid pandemic and a hotly contended presidential election. I was skeptical, blogging, on May 3rd:

People are desperate to concern themselves with something other than coronavirus and Joe Biden's sexuality.

I think that's why this story has legs — disgusting spindly legs — "‘Murder Hornets’ in the U.S.: The Rush to Stop the Asian Giant Hornet/Sightings of the Asian giant hornet have prompted fears that the vicious insect could establish itself in the United States and devastate bee populations."

That's in the New York Times, where I would expect a little more care not to randomly give off whiffs of xenophobia. Why are they insisting on calling it the "Asian giant hornet"? They already had "murder hornet" and "giant hornet." Why go big with "Asian"? 

Dr. Looney said it was immediately clear that the state faced a serious problem, but with only two insects in hand and winter coming on, it was nearly impossible to determine how much the hornet had already made itself at home.

Must I worry about 2 insects simply because Dr. Looney — if that really is his name — finds the seriousness "immediately clear"?

That said, I am looking for more exciting articles that are not coronavirus or sex and Joe Biden.

What was the sex and Joe Biden topic? Had you remembered the murder hornets? Yesterday's ephemera. You remember covid, of course, but it's wearing thin. They're cuing up the next scary insect + disease. I see Gavin Newsom has declared an emergency — in California — over "bird flu." Which sounds like "bird flew." I guess that's why they usually say "avian flu." While you wait for whatever insects they've got cued up, you can watch the wonderful old movie "Killer Bees":

But seriously, congratulations to all the good people who swarmed together to conquer the murder hornets.

"I'm looking for famous quotes that express the idea that the person who controls X controls Y."

That's how I prompted Grok just now. I was inspired by something Kakistocracy wrote in the comments in last night's café:

It’s weird to think that Musk will end up having paid far less for the United States Government than he did for Twitter.* To be fair -- what he paid for twitter was kinda the down payment for the presidency. It was a package deal. He needed both.

Here are the quotes Grok fished up for me: 

• "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." This quote from George Orwell's "1984" emphasizes how control over information (history) leads to control over future outcomes.

• "Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws." Attributed to Mayer Amschel Rothschild, this quote suggests that control over a nation's monetary system equates to control over its governance.

• "He who controls the media, controls the mind." This is a variation on a quote by Jim Morrison, highlighting how control over information dissemination (media) can shape public perception and behavior.

• "Control the money, you control countries. Control the food, you control the world." A quote often attributed to Henry Kissinger illustrates the power of controlling essential resources like finance and food to influence global or national control.

I'd like to have those 4 over to dinner at the same time. We could talk about controlling things. Who would control the conversation, hmmm? I say Orwell. 

Anyway, Grok and I — at my prompting — proceeded to talk about the ancient Archimedes quote "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." (It's different from those other 4 quotes, but not completely different.) And then I fed Kakistocracy's quote to Grok thusly: 

"They say that the film is based on my book. But the film has virtually nothing in it that’s from my book."

"There are hundreds of moments [in the film] that didn’t happen. The film is fiction."

Says Eric Wald, quoted in "For Bob Dylan’s biographer, 'A Complete Unknown' is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction/Elijah Wald’s 'Dylan Goes Electric'inspired the new Timothée Chalamet-led Dylan biopic" (Forward).

Wald starts ticking off movie scenes that never happened in real life — Dylan arriving at Newport on a motorcycle, Van Ronk telling Dylan that Woody Guthrie is in the hospital... Joan Baez... being part of the Greenwich Village folk scene (no, Cambridge, she hated New York)....

“The example that keeps coming back to me, though,” Wald continues, “is the morning after the whole craziness goes down at Newport — with Dylan riding off on his motorcycle past the fairgrounds where Pete Seeger is helping put away the folding chairs. Dylan did not have his motorcycle at Newport and I don’t think Pete Seeger was out that morning putting away folding chairs.”...

That example says a lot about cinematic art. It's good to show specific, concrete things that carry a lot of meaning and evoke strong or delicate feelings. Wald says the movie is "poetically accurate." Yes, Bob with the motorcycle and Pete with the folding chairs replaces what in the book is extensive examination of Pete's devotion to communalism and Bob's individualism. A movie could just have Bob and Pete talking about these concepts and how they apply to events in their lives. That could work in live theater or even in a movie (as in my favorite movie, "My Dinner With Andre"), but movies are expected to be highly visual. If they're not, what was all the money for?

Dylan tweeted his approval of the movie, but he hadn't seen it yet. Wald says: "My sense is that he likes movies and he has never had any hesitation about fictionalizing his life." That sounds right.

Sunrise — 7:08.

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"Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his administration will soon be bathing in it."

"We need to reveal the populist Trump as a plutocrat. The hypocrisy will be there in the upcoming tax legislation and slashed regulations for the powerful — all paid for by the middle class.... By returning to our roots as the voice of the middle class, we can unite both moderates and progressives in a fight against the well-heeled and well-connected."

Writes Rahm Emanuel, in "The road back to power for Democrats/It begins with messengers and messages that meet the moment" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would take up TikTok's appeal challenging a federal law that could ban the popular social media app by next month."

NBC News reports.

The court acted just a day after TikTok filed its appeal and will hear oral arguments on Jan. 10 before issuing a decision on whether to put the law on hold. At issue is a bipartisan measure passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden that would go into effect on Jan. 19, the day before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. The law, called the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, would require TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the platform to an American company or face a ban. TikTok has challenged the law, saying it violates its free speech rights under the First Amendment....

By the way, Trump talked about TikTok at his press conference on Monday. Asked "How do you plan to stop the ban on TikTok next month?," he said:

"From the very first scenes, as played by Chalamet, this Dylan has no use for anything other than his own songs and his desperate, entirely internalized, need to keep making them."

"Everyone else... they’re all just obstacles that stand in his way. Chalamet’s Dylan is aloof, peevish and, frankly, kind of a jerk. Nearly everyone in his orbit suffers accordingly. The closer they try to get, the more Dylan vaporizes and wafts away. But this doesn’t happen because of fame or riches or drugs, like it would in most music biopics. It happens because of who Dylan is. He just doesn’t care. He lives his life and writes his music and manages his career like a man who knows everyone around him is trying to write a biopic about him."

Writes Will Leitch, in "Don’t think twice, Dylan fans. ‘A Complete Unknown’ is all right. The impossibility of ever truly understanding Bob Dylan is the movie’s central tension" (WaPo).

I wonder if Will Leitch is related to Donovan (Leitch). Just an idle thought. It's hard to see how it would matter. Anyway, are you planning to watch this movie? Bob Dylan recommended the movie. I blogged about that 13 days ago, here. He also recommended the book the movie is based on — "Dylan Goes Electric" (commission earned) — saying, "After you’ve seen the movie read the book." But the movie doesn't premiere until Christmas, so I went and read the book out of order. I do some of the things Bob tells me to do. Some of them. Not all of them. 

Here's something from the book that I happened to highlight:

"No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? Makes no sense!"

"Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!"

Writes Donald Trump on Truth Social.

Discussed here, at The Hill:

His joking comes after the president-elect announced last month that he would impose a 25 percent tariff on products imported into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico.... Trump said the move would exert pressure on the trading partners to better crack down on the movement of fentanyl and other drugs into the U.S. and fortify border security.... He has also jokingly called Trudeau the “governor” of the “Great State of Canada.”

ADDED: BBC asks: "Will Trudeau Resign? Four paths Trudeau can take as political crisis deepens."

"A traditionalist to his bones, Mr. Biden has opted for the grace and reticence he believes are befitting the departing president of a defeated party..."

"... even as the incoming president threatens to imprison opponents and tries to install conspiracy-minded acolytes in positions of power.... At this stage of Mr. Biden’s presidency... his public messaging is targeted and restrained. Once Washington’s most loquacious chatterbox, Mr. Biden these days barely engages with the reporters who follow him everywhere. He has held no news conferences and conducted no interviews with the traditional news media since the election, though he has done some podcasts. His only reply to shouted questions from journalists during his entire Africa trip added up to 14 words. In South America, it was just a single word. As a result, Mr. Biden has not once publicly addressed his much-criticized decision to pardon his son since the written statement he released, nor has he discussed his consideration of blanket pardons for adversaries of Mr. Trump to protect them from his promised campaign of 'retribution' once he takes office...."

From "A Weary Biden Heads for the Exit/Still stinging from the election, President Biden is pushing for his final priorities but has absented himself from the national conversation about Donald Trump after warning repeatedly that he was a threat to American democracy" (NYT).

"It’s not often that my work gets a killer five-star review from an actual killer...."

"In my 35 years as a filmmaker, have I said or done anything that has implied I condone murder?... Throughout my adult life, I have repeatedly stated that I’m a pacifist. In fact, I have never struck another human in my life. Not even on the playground...."

Writes Michael Moore, in "A Manifesto Against For-Profit Health Insurance Companies/I hereby give you my Oscar-nominated Documentary on the Killer Health Insurance companies like United HealthCare —SICKO — for FREE… and let’s end and replace this so-called 'health care system' NOW" (MichaelMoore.com).

In the United States, we have a whopping 1.4 million people employed with the job of DENYING HEALTH CARE, vs only 1 million doctors in the entire country! That’s all you need to know about America. We pay more people to deny care than to give it....

"Going to a party and thinking about what others are thinking about you is a pretty surefire way to have a terrible time."

"It’s such a reliable way to feel terrible that social psychologists in the ’70s and ’80s used to have people sit in front of a mirror and think about themselves when they wanted to study how negative moods affect behavior."

Said Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science, quoted in "How to Get a Party Buzz Even When You’re Not Drinking/These tips for sober socializing may not have you dancing on tables, but they’ll help you have plenty of fun" (NYT).

Thinking about yourself while looking in a mirror is a pretty distorted form of thinking about yourself. And I'm not even sure what "they" means in "they wanted to study." Is it the "people" or the social psychologists? When I first read that, I thought the subjects — the "people" — were receiving therapy and being taught that they look worse when they're thinking about themselves. So quit focusing on yourself and you will do better in social settings. But then I saw "social" before "psychologists" and realized this isn't individual therapy. The "people" were subjects of a study, and they were looking in the mirror... why? To ensure that they were thinking about themselves? Or was it to produce "negative moods"? Doesn't seem like a well-designed study!

Anyway, do you go to parties and think about what other people are thinking about you? Are there any mirrors around? Are you able to dance without drinking?

ADDED: I'm having a very interesting discussion with Grok about mirrors. At this point, it's pretty much written a complete book for me. I'll just show you the cover:

Sunrise — 7:08, 7:18, 7:36.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

The intensely visual and emotional Trumpian view of the landscape of war.

From the transcript of yesterday's press conference:

We're trying to get the war stopped, that horrible war that's going on in Ukraine with Russia, Ukraine. We've got a little progress. It's a tough one. It's a nasty one. It's nasty. People are being killed at levels that nobody's ever seen. It's very level fields. And the only thing that stops a bullet is a body, a human body. And the number of soldiers that are being killed on both sides is astronomical. I've never seen anything like that. And rapidly. I get reports every week and it's not even… It's like just… They're going down. Nobody's seen anything like it. It's a very flat surface, a very flat land. That's why it's great farming land. It's the breadbasket for the world actually. But it's very flat and there's nothing to stop a bullet but a body.

"Former Representative Liz Cheney colluded with 'star witness' Cassidy Hutchinson without Hutchinson’s attorney’s knowledge."

"Former Representative Liz Cheney should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering based on the new information about her communication. Cassidy Hutchinson’s most outrageous claims lacked any evidence, and the Select Committee had knowledge that her claims were false when they publicly promoted her. President Trump did not attack his Secret Service Detail at any time on January 6. President Trump did not have intelligence indicating violence on the morning of January 6. Cassidy Hutchinson falsely claimed to have drafted a handwritten note for President Trump on January 6. Representative Cheney and Cassidy Hutchinson baselessly attempted to disbar Hutchinson’s former attorney...."

From "Chairman Loudermilk Releases Second January 6, 2021 Report" released this morning.

Is it too soon to add my "Biden pardons" tag?

"Trump files suit against Iowa pollster Ann Selzer and Des Moines Register.... Selzer published a poll days before the election..."

"... that said Kamala Harris was ahead by 3 percentage points. Trump ultimately won the state by 13 percentage points."

NBC News reports.

The suit, filed Monday night in Polk County, Iowa, says it seeks “accountability for brazen election interference” over a Nov. 2 poll that showed Kamala Harris up 3 percentage points in Iowa. Trump ultimately won the state by double digits, a difference that his lawyers argue in the suit constitutes “election-interfering fiction.” The president-elect is making the claim under the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive advertising....

Well, it's not just advertising. It covers "advertisement, sale, or lease of consumer merchandise, or the solicitation of contributions for charitable purposes." But still, it's hard to see how that could cover deceptions in the form of political polls — however dishonest — published — however corruptly — in the news portion of a newspaper. I'm not looking at the complaint, however. I understand the outrage, and maybe there oughta be a law, but how can it be the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act? Who was to be bamboozled out of anything? The Trump campaign? (That is: Come waste time and money in Iowa and stay out of those blue-wall states that will actually determine the election.)

"'Hookahs and music were banned from the beginning, said Yahia Naeme, the owner of the cafe..."

"... who said the ban had lost him business because many people used to come to his cafe specifically to smoke hookahs. 'If we can’t offer it, they’ll get bored and go elsewhere,' he said. Other cafes in Idlib have skirted the law by offering hookahs in speakeasy-type environments behind closed doors. But Mr. Naeme did not want to risk running afoul of the area’s rulers...."

From "Cafes Can’t Play Music, but the Water Taps Work: Life Under Syria’s Rebels/The Islamists who now lead Syria have ruled the city of Idlib for years. Residents say they imposed some strict laws, but also heeded some complaints and improved public services" (NYT).

"As someone who practiced press law for more than twenty years, and served as a senior executive of news organizations for just as long, I was shocked by the decision of ABC News last week..."

"... to pay $16 million to settle Donald Trump’s libel case over George Stephanopoulos’s This Week broadcast in March. The shock came, and still lingers, because I—and every experienced press lawyer not involved in the case with whom I have discussed it—considered the case one in which ABC was likely to eventually prevail. The decision to settle has been greeted by a lot of commentary, but almost no reporting of new facts. Understandably, that’s generated a good deal of hand-wringing about corporations 'bending a knee' or gloating about the humbling of legacy media or an arrogant press getting its comeuppance. But such speculation does little to explain what happened...."

Writes Richard J. Tofel, in "Questions ABC News Should Answer Following the $16 Million Trump Settlement/The decision to cave and apologize has unnerved American journalists. The network owes them an explanation" (Columbia Journalism Review).

"In the manifesto, called 'War Against Humanity,' the author writes that they have 'grown to hate people, and society' and calls their parents 'scum.'"

"The author also writes that they acquired weapons 'by lies and manipulation, and my father's stupidity' and describes wanting to die by suicide, but feeling like carrying out a shooting was 'better for evolution rather than just one stupid boring suicide.'"

Writes Newsweek, in "Natalie Rupnow's Reported Manifesto: What We Know" (about the school shooting that took place in my city yesterday).

The use of the word "scum" in a manifesto makes me think of "SCUM Manifesto," a 1967 feminist document. I discussed it back in 2017, when Facebook was banning some women who wrote about men as "scum." The "SCUM Manifesto" begins: "'Life' in this 'society' being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of 'society' being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."

And yet, this new manifesto — what I'm seeing of it, anyway — uses the language of gender neutrality: "Humanity... people... society... parents." There is, however, "father." I see that Newsweek is using they/them pronouns for the killer.

Newsweek also reports President Joe Biden's hasty response: "We need Congress to act. Now. From Newtown to Uvalde, Parkland to Madison.... Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines...."

But when he pardoned his son Hunter for violating existing gun laws, Joe Biden attacked the prosecution as unfair and biased. One might have thought he'd refrain from calling for more gun laws when he so recently and conspicuously treated a gun law as not justifying enforcement. And yet didn't we all expect it — expect that next time there's a school shooting, Joe would indignantly cry out for more gun laws? #hypocrisy

Sunrise — 7:13, 7:20.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

Trump reveals something of what he knows/thinks about the drones (but declines to talk about whether he's received an intelligence briefing).

From a long press conference today: "The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don't want to comment, and I think they'd be better off saying what it is our military knows and our our president knows, and for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense. I can't imagine it's the enemy because it was the enemy they'd blast it out. Even if they were late, they'd blast it. Something strange is going on. For some reason they don't want to tell the people, and they should, because the people are really — I mean they happen to be over Bedminster... they're very they're very close to Bedminster. I think maybe I won't spend the weekend in Bedminster. I've decided to cancel my trip."

He's asked, "Have you received an intelligence briefing on the drones?" and, unsurprisingly, he says, "I don't want to comment on that." But I think he has...

"When the topic turned to vaccines, the discussion was not about banning the product...."

"Kennedy spoke about the need for better study of the vaccine dosing schedule for newborns and the rise in chronic disease, while also rattling off statistics about the increase in autism rates despite multiple studies that have shown no link between vaccines and the disorder and World Health Organization estimates that immunizations have saved 154 million lives.... Here Trump redirected the conversation... while backing up Kennedy’s desire for more research.... He suggested to the drug company executives that they had nothing to fear from further investigation of the causes of autism, saying Kennedy could help put to rest vaccine hesitancy if no connection was found. The aftermath of the dinner, which ended by all accounts with surprising warmth on all sides, has become the stuff of mini-legend in the week that has followed. Trump called it 'a little unusual' in a recent NBC News interview. 'At a point I thought, I can’t believe I am doing this,' another participant said, expressing a sentiment echoed by others."

That's The Washington Post admiring Donald Trump!

The article is "How Donald Trump broke the ice between RFK Jr. and drug company CEOs/The president-elect’s choice for health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is meeting with senators in Washington this week" (free-access link).

Do I need a new tag? Something like "Trump the Great Uniter"? Wouldn't it be funny... I mean, wouldn't it be nice if the old press template — Trump the Divider — failed? And who doesn't want it to fail?! Who doesn't want good things to happen?

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appears — one night only — in a performance of the Broadway show "& Juliet."

Nicely done!

"And and when I talk to people close to President-elect Trump and people who work for him, people on the outside — allies — they already see this as a resounding success."

"You know, they will say, look, who knows, maybe more accusations will come out against Pete Hegseth. Maybe we end up losing four senators and he goes down. But even if that happens, they see this as a cautionary tale for Republicans. They are putting Republicans on notice that they're not going to tolerate dissent. They're not going to tolerate opposition to Donald Trump during his return to Washington. And by making such a fight of this, by publicly forcing these senators to bend the knee, they are creating a template for what we're likely to see next year. As Trump tries to pass legislation, as he inevitably does controversial things that will make some senators squeamish, the Trump team is sending out the message. Now, there will be a very steep cost if you go against Donald Trump."

Said Jonathan Swan at the end of today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue." 

The episode concentrates on the effort to win support from Senator Joni Ernst. You can listen to that. I won't summarize. I am blogging this because I want to say that when I heard the part quoted above, I thought: Sounds like "Master of the Senate." 

Makes me want to reread Robert A. Caro's great book about LBJ. (Commission earned.) 

I hope Trump gets his Robert A. Caro some day. 

"Pilloried by Democrats during his 2012 run, Romney has emerged as a strong voice for a bygone kind of politics."

Said Jake Tapper, introducing Mitt Romney on "State of the Union" yesterday.

Romney gave a long interview, and maybe you saw a clip of it, but I want to do my own edit:

ROMNEY: Donald Trump won. He won overwhelmingly. He said what he was going to do, and that's what he's doing. I mean, people are saying, oh, I don't like this appointment or this policy that he's talking about. But those are the things he said he was going to do when he ran. So you can't complain about someone who does what he said he was going to do. And I agree with him on a lot of policy fronts. I disagree with him on some things. But it's like, OK, give him a chance to do what he said he's going to do and see how it works out.... 

TAPPER:  Are you worried at all about being a target for retribution, you or members of your family?

ROMNEY: No, actually, I have been pretty clean throughout my life. I'm not particularly worried about criminal investigations.

"Nicola Guess is a dietitian and researcher at the University of Oxford. She also runs a private clinic and has worked as a consultant for food companies, including Beyond Meat."

I'm reading the fine print at the bottom of the New York Times article, "Why Ultraprocessed Foods Aren’t Always Bad," by Nicola Guess. 

The problem is that the category of ultraprocessed foods, which makes up about 60 percent of the American diet by some estimates, is so broad that it borders on useless. It lumps store-bought whole-grain bread and hummus in with cookies, potato chips and soda. While many ultraprocessed foods are associated with poor health, others, like breakfast cereals and yogurt, aren’t.

Processing can also create products suitable for people with food intolerances or ones that have a lower environmental footprint. (Full disclosure: I have consulted for food companies that I feel make beneficial products, including Beyond Meat, which makes ultraprocessed meat alternatives that I believe are better for the planet.)...

So, there is also disclosure in the body of the text of the article.

I love the author's name, Nicola Guess. I have to guess about the usefulness of any of the assertions here.

Sunrise — 7:12, 7:09.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Holding space."

 Perhaps you're noticing this today:

Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for that CEO shooter, the abs, and that body"

The American left's creepy fascination with Luigi Mangione continuespic.twitter.com/CJbFoys6iN

— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) December 15, 2024

That's Margaret Cho: "I'm holding space for... those eyebrows, that body, the abs."

She's being funny... and inappropriate, and I'm not going to say anything more about how bad it is to drool over an alleged murderer. I want to discuss the phrase "holding space," which gained traction a week ago with this promotional interview for the movie "Wicked":

"People are taking the lyrics of 'Defying Gravity' and really holding space with that and feeling power in that."

I see there's a Wikipedia article, "Holding space":

"Holding space" is a psychology concept meaning towards creating a safe space for someone or something by being present for them, physically, emotionally and mentally without judgement.

"Some historians who follow the presidency say Biden has always shown flashes of anger when he feels underestimated."

"While they are far more fleeting than Trump’s brandishing of grievances, they have at times been unmistakable. 'There has always been this issue of resentment with Biden. He resented [former president Barack] Obama and crew for supplanting him in 2008 and for telling him not to run in [2016], and he has many other resentments,' said Tevi Troy, a presidential historian who recently published a book on the relationship between presidents and CEOs. 'But can you imagine how resentful he is of the shifting narratives and the way he’s been pushed aside and manipulated and not treated fairly. So yeah, I can see him being resentful.'"

From "Biden touts his legacy, but frustration seeps through/The president is observing the traditions of a peaceful transfer of power, but his regrets and misgivings are evident" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Lots to talk about there, but I want to focus on "brandishing" — Trump’s brandishing of grievances. This is an article about Biden, his resentfulness, but Trump must be inserted, and he must be worse. Biden has  fleeting flashes of well-founded anger, but Trump has grievances, and he brandishes them. So Biden briefly displays resentment but Trump waves his resentment around like a weapon. 

Just yesterday, I was talking about the journalistic deployment of the word "brandish." Discussing a NYT article — "In Display of Fealty, Tech Industry Curries Favor With Trump/It was a week of frenzied activity as Silicon Valley billionaires and their companies brandished checks and compliments for President-elect Trump"  — I wrote:

"Last night, the runways at Stewart Airfield were shut down for approximately one hour due to drone activity in the airspace. This has gone too far."

A statement from New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

In mid-November, I directed the New York State Intelligence Center to actively investigate drone sightings and coordinate with federal law enforcement to address this issue, and those efforts are ongoing. But in order to allow state law enforcement to work on this issue, I am now calling on Congress to pass the Counter-UAS Authority Security, Safety, and Reauthorization Act.... Until those powers are granted to state and local officials, the Biden Administration must step in by directing additional federal law enforcement to New York and the surrounding region to ensure the safety of our critical infrastructure and our people.

"[T]he idea that today’s vaccines are overtaxing children’s immune systems is fundamentally flawed, experts said."

"Vaccines today are cleaner and more efficient, and they contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system — by orders of magnitude — than they did decades ago. What’s more, the immune reactions produced by vaccines are 'minuscule' compared with those that children experience on a daily basis, said Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, a pediatrician at Stanford University who advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccines. Children harbor trillions of bacteria, more than the number of their own cells, and encounter pathogens everywhere — from caregivers and playmates; in kitchens, bathrooms and playgrounds; on toys, towels and sponges. 'That’s just the normal course of growing up, is to have fevers and develop immunity to all of the organisms that are in the environment around you,' Dr. Maldonado said. 'We are built to withstand that.'..."

From "Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ the Immune System? No. Vaccines today are more efficient and contain far fewer stimulants to the immune system than some used decades ago" (NYT).

"In most states, children must be vaccinated against about a dozen diseases, a schedule that typically adds up to about 17 doses, administered before they begin kindergarten... Each of the shots contains about 10 antigens. Older vaccines packed a much bigger punch, having up to 300 times as many...."

At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Again, no sunrise picture. It was cold and overcast. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I hope you'll still support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

As long as I'm talking about apologies...

"George Stephanopoulos and ABC apologize to Trump, are forced to pay $15 million to settle defamation suit/ABC News will pay $15 million as a charitable contribution to a Trump presidential foundation and museum" (Fox News).

The defamation had to do with the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit. Stephanopoulos incorrectly asserted "Donald Trump has been found liable for rape by a jury."

"This is unacceptable and disturbing. The DMV is taking swift action to recall these shocking plates..."

"We sincerely apologize that these personalized plates were not properly rejected during our review process. The use of hateful language is not only a clear violation of our policies but also a violation of our core values to proudly serve the public."

Wrote the California Department of Motor Vehicles, quoted in "Family that owns Tesla Cybertruck with ‘LOLOCT7’ plate says its meaning was misconstrued" (Washington Times).

"How GOP Senators Are Secretly Getting Ready to Surrender to Trump."

Headline at The New Republic. Article by Greg Sargent. Subheadline: "Trump wants to turn the FBI into something so draconian that the political press many not grasp it until it’s too late. And Republican senators are already giving themselves cover to go along with all of it."

Is it "surrender" if you're on his side?

I see I have an old tag "Trump's swamp draining." I'll use that for this. I created it in 2016 but never really used it in the first Trump administration.

"If you think of the United States as a football field, all the garbage that we will generate in the next 1,000 years would fit inside a tiny fraction of the one-inch line."

Said John Tierney, quoted in "No, Recycling Will Not Save the Environment/Despite what you may have heard, many 'recyclables' sent to recycling plants are never recycled at all" (Reason).

The article is from 2 years ago, but it presents a video that I've been seeing tweeted and blogged this week, and I didn't remember seeing it before. That one-inch line visual really stuck with me. If it's correct, the answer is so obviously landfills, and people who think we're running out of space to just pile up our trash have been wildly misled.

"The comment from the Feds is absurd. These are car-sized drones that have flown over New Jersey, New York, and military bases in Virginia."

"If the Feds know who is doing this, they should say so. If they don't know, they should say that. To say that they 'pose no threat,' but we can't tell you what they are is the height of bureaucratic arrogance."

That's the most sensible comment at the WaPo column "New Jersey needs to get a grip. But our drone defenses need work. There’s no need to panic about drones." The column — not the comment, the column — is by Max Boot.

And here's the statement from the Feds the commenter is reacting to: "We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus."

And then there's this:

Yes father, use grok to generate an image of the New Jersey drones delivering McDonalds to that fat slob Chris Christie.

Perfect, now post it on 𝕏 https://t.co/gvnetk4faA pic.twitter.com/JbRCvjRgDo

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) December 14, 2024

"The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation."

Tweets Trump.

"I love Italy."

Me after my 4th breadbasket at Olive Garden pic.twitter.com/zHrF2iJv1d

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 13, 2024

"But what is lost in this lionization of one of the most notorious terrorists in American history is that for Mr. Kaczynski..."

"... the desire to kill came first, and the ideological justifications followed. Lonely rage defined him, and he spent far more time tormenting his neighbors than he did on his grandiose plans to bring down industrial society. He killed dogs for their barking, strung razor wire across dirt bike paths and fantasized about murdering a neighboring toddler. The manifesto and its carefully constructed veneer of Luddite and anarchist philosophies were a con to lure others into his world of despair and hatred.... He callously identified the environmental movement as being the most socially acceptable justification for his crimes, even though he privately denigrated environmentalists in his journals, and proudly littered, poached and illegally logged on national forest land around his cabin."

From "What Do You Say to a Young Person Who Admires the Unabomber?" by Maxim Loskutoff, who wrote a novel about Ted Kaczynski, "Old King."

In the future, evildoers will be able to use A.I. to produce a carefully-constructed-looking manifesto that organizes their chaotic facts into what seems to be a coherent philosophy.

The answer to the question in the column title is tell these students...

"Before I read 'The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins,' it hadn’t occurred to me that saxophonists must watch what they eat so as not to have 'an accidental elimination' while playing."

"Before I read Robert Hilburn’s biography of Randy Newman, I didn’t know Newman was kind of lying in interviews when he said his song 'Short People' was about prejudice. 'I just thought it was funny,' he said. 'The Art of Dying,' a posthumous collection of writings by the New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, came out this year. He was ill with cancer when he compiled it. He wrote: 'I swatted a fly the other day and thought, Outlived you.'"

Writes Dwight Garner, the NYT book critic and my favorite garner, in "Our Book Critics on Their Year in Reading/Jennifer Szalai, Dwight Garner and Alexandra Jacobs look back at the books that 'offered refuge from the wheels grinding in our heads'" (NYT).

"I’ve been writing lately about how American politics seem to have moved into a new dispensation — more unsettled and extreme..."

"... but also perhaps more energetic and dynamic. One benefit of unsettlement, famously adumbrated by Orson Welles’s villainous Harry Lime in 'The Third Man,' is supposed to be cultural ferment: 'In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.' There are certainly signs of ferment out there, in technology, religion and intellectual life. But I’m worried about pop culture — worried that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should, worried that even if the rest of American society starts moving, our storytelling is still going to be stuck...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Can We Make Pop Culture Great Again?" (NYT).

I got totally sidetracked by "dispensation." Here's my interaction with Grok that convinced me that Douthat didn't make a weird word choice. It's an excellent word choice, and I enjoyed reading about the religious meanings of "dispensation," including

What the NYT is saying today under the heading "Trump Transition."

On the front page of the NYT website right now:

 

1. "Trump’s Night-Owl Tendencies Set Stage for After-Hours Diplomacy." When you click through, the  headline becomes "Trump’s Transition Business Largely Happens After Night Falls." I prefer the front-page headline because it focuses on Trump, the person.

Headline writers blithely omit "a" and "the," but there's a big difference between "the polio vaccine" and "a polio vaccine."

The Washington Post splashes this in our face: "RFK Jr. ally filed petition to revoke FDA approval for polio vaccine."

I suspect that many readers experience alarm — Oh, no, it's crazy to take away the polio vaccine! — and read no further.

But it's not the polio vaccine. It's a polio vaccine. From the text of the article:

An ally of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. petitioned the government in 2022 to reconsider its approval of a widely used polio vaccine, which is credited with staving off a debilitating virus that can result in permanent paralysis.

The petition is about one polio vaccine, not all polio vaccines. 

Aaron Siri — a lawyer with a history of seeking to expand exemptions to vaccines — asked the Food and Drug Administration to suspend or withdraw approval of Sanofi’s polio vaccine for children.... In the 2022 petition, [Siri] raised questions about the safety of the polio vaccine and argued for more studies to be conducted.

I've added the boldface. That "the" in "the polio vaccine" refers to Sanofi's vaccine, and if you go to the link on "petitioned the government" you'll see Sanofi's vaccine distinguished from other polio vaccines.

The Washington Post has a subheadline with the word "the":

At the Friday Night Café...

You can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise picture today. Too cold! But I hope you'll still support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"I’m grateful he accepted my invitation and hope he’s able to have fun and appreciate how much his fellow citizens admire his courage."

 Said JD Vance, quoted in "Daniel Penny accepts VP-elect JD Vance's invite to be his 'personal guest' at the Army-Navy game Saturday. "

Peter Thiel talks to Piers Morgan about Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione.

It's an interesting discussion, but many people are getting hung up on Thiel's very awkward, disfluent manner of speaking:

Morgan shows Thiel a clip that Luigi Mangione shared on social media. It's a clip of Thiel himself, and Thiel says it's the first time he's heard about the alleged killer's interest in him. In that clip, Thiel says:

"Crystal Mangum, who accused three Duke University lacrosse players of rape in 2006, has confessed that her allegations were false."

"After more than 18 years, Mangum made this admission during a podcast interview. She is currently serving a prison sentence for an unrelated murder charge, and due to the statute of limitations, she cannot be charged with perjury for the false accusations. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs."

Grok summarizes at the moment.

She's in prison for murder now, and she's waited until the statute of limitations has run on the perjury she now says she committed. 

The charges against the lacrosse players were dropped long ago, and each of them won $20 million for the persecution they suffered. The confessing looks like this, in case you want to form an opinion about why she's doing this now:

More than 18 years after the Duke lacrosse allegations, Crystal Mangum admits that she made it all up. pic.twitter.com/TPQ3jc8oEv

— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) December 13, 2024

"Though Mr. Biden has the prerogative to confer broad immunity with what are sometimes called safe harbor or protective pardons, doing so now on a large scale would be difficult to achieve..."

"... at least with any principled consistency.... [E]ven the broadest presidential pardon couldn’t fully protect someone Mr. Trump was determined to harass. His IRS could engage in selective audits. The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division could scrutinize someone’s business. Without the protection of the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, congressional Republicans could subpoena beneficiaries of the pardons. The hearings that followed would be perjury traps — and Mr. Biden’s pardons could not cover future crimes. Conservative prosecutors in Republican-run states could try to contrive local charges...."

So writes the Washington Post Editorial Board, in "Biden should rule out preemptive pardons/Trump might target his enemies, but get-out-of-jail-free cards are unnecessary and imply guilt."

And I'll just put this here:

Oh Gary, how could you do this to me? 🥹 pic.twitter.com/OoooQI77ZS

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2024

"This is civilization ending philosophy where really bad ideas are being smuggled in under the guise of civil rights...."

"So they take a very distorted view of what black is. Black is, you listen to this type of music, you dress in this way, you study these courses, you have these political views, and we have created what a black person is. And if you don't fit into that box, it doesn't, you are not real. This is destroying the identities of hundreds of millions of people who have different ethnicities. They're all black, different cultures, different languages.... We did so much to get rid of stereotypes and now the stereotypes are coming back except now they're coming back as a norm to be enforced rather than something to be laughed at.... So I hate critical race theory...."

Said Kemi Badenoch, in the new episode of the Bari Weiss "Honestly" podcast, "Is Kemi Badenoch the Next Margaret Thatcher?" (transcript and audio here).

Badenoch, who grew up in Nigeria, now leads the Conservative Party in the U.K.

Despite being called a “race traitor” for opposing DEI, UK Conservative Party leader @KemiBadenoch is not backing down.

“These are civilization-ending bad ideas.”

“It is not real equality. It is not even promoting the well-being of minorities. It is a way for the left to… pic.twitter.com/C83dVySxc3

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 12, 2024

"Many women start struggling with new facial hair growth later in life.... Some said they had made friends or relatives promise to pluck their hairs for them..."

"... if they ever ended up in a hospital or a care facility. 'We made a pact: When we were old and maybe unable to care for ourselves, each of us would make sure that hairy ugliness wasn’t noticeable on the other,' said Debbie Russell, 68. But there is the possibility of finding peace with age, too. 'To me, my facial hair feels like a part of my gender identity, and since menopause I have a little goatee now, which I shave,' said Mitzi Cowell, 60, 'but I dream of the day when I can just grow it out, braid it.'"

From "Is Facial Hair the Last Taboo in Women’s Beauty? Millions of women regularly remove it. Does it have to be that way?" (NYT).

Also: "Women with facial hair have been documented throughout history, often in ways that make current attitudes seem modest. (Take, for example, Annie Jones, P.T. Barnum’s bearded lady, who was billed in his circus as a 'freak' — a term Jones protested.)"

From that link about Annie Jones: "Annie Jones was born in Virginia in 1865, reportedly exiting her mother’s womb with her chin already covered in hair.... Jones was not even a year old when her parents first pushed her into P.T. Barnum’s exhibition in New York City. The tiny girl was billed as 'The Infant Esau'.... As time went on, the 'Infant Esau' grew into the 'Esau Lady' and, eventually, the 'Bearded Lady.'"

"She was accused of saying in a conversation at a conference in March that the university was 'controlled by wealthy Jews'...."

"She was also accused of saying that Jewish students were 'wealthy and privileged' and not in need of her office’s diversity services, and that 'Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,' according to the documents, which were part of a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League of Michigan.... Ms. Dawson had been in charge of an office that oversees efforts to mentor and retain racially, culturally and economically diverse students.... Ms. Dawson’s lawyer, Amanda Ghannam, denied that she said anything antisemitic.... 'The university has clearly, blatantly violated Ms. Dawson’s First Amendment rights.... It’s deeply troubling that they would escalate the situation to termination based on one conversation in somebody’s private capacity'...."

From "D.E.I. Official at University of Michigan Is Fired Over Antisemitism Claim, Lawyer Says/The official, an administrator of multicultural programs, was accused of making antisemitic remarks in a conversation. Her lawyer said that the school fired her this week, and vowed to sue" (NYT).